1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a novel telephone and telephone answering apparatus and method capable of using secondary information. The secondary information may comprise data, executable instructions, electronic addresses, scripting laguages, as well as audio or video information. Although not limited thereto, one embodiment of the present invention makes use of techniques known in the art of data hiding, steganography, and audio watermarking to embed the secondary information into audio passages.
2. Description of Related Art
Techniques are known in the art for communicating more than one type of information within a single phone call. For example, simultaneous voice-data modems permit data to be transmitted and voice conversations to be carried on, at the same time during a single call. However, within the SVD (simultaneous voice/data) technical art it would not be possible to xe2x80x9cdepositxe2x80x9d data into the message store of a conventional telephone answering machine, in such manner that the data can be concurrently saved alongside the voice message recorded in the answering machine memory. Further, it would not be possible to accomplish this without even having any knowledge of the type of answering machine involved. Still further, there is no teaching in the current art as to how secondary data might be xe2x80x9cdepositedxe2x80x9d into a conventional telephone answering machine that was designed to do nothing beyond recording voice messages, and then later be retrieved. There is also no teaching in the current art of telephone answering devices capable of automatically xe2x80x9clistening inxe2x80x9d for and of utilizing information, for example, steganographically embedded in the telephone call.
The present invention relates to a telephone and to a telephone answering device capable of using secondary information. More generally, the present invention is directed at a method and apparatus for receiving and for making telephone calls containing secondary information. The secondary information may comprise data, executable content, audio or video information; and calls communicated containing such secondary information may be referred to as being in (RCF) Rich Call Format. In one embodiment of the invention, the telephone or telephone answering device is capable only of receiving, of using, and of forwarding information received in Rich Call Format. In another embodiment of the invention, the telephone or telephone answering device can additionally encode secondary information for transmission to another location, and thus, of originating the placement of Rich Call Formatted calls. It is an object of the present invention is to furnish a method and apparatus for using secondary information in Rich Call Formatted calls in a manner that is backwards compatible and fully interoperable with existing art telephony equipment and methods. For example, RCF phone calls made to current art telephones should be receivable and appear substantially the same as ordinary phone calls. Similarly, RCF phone calls made to existing art telephone answering machines should permit Rich Call Formatted phone messages to be xe2x80x9cdepositedxe2x80x9d in the existing art answering machines, such that, although the existing art answering devices would not be able to use the enhanced capabilities afforded by the present invention, they would still be receivable and appear substantially the same as ordinary phone messages. Moreover, an RCF-capable phone or answering machine would later be able to retrieve any RCF messages deposited into any answering device or voice mail box, whether or not that intermediate answering device or mail box was itself RCF-capable, and subsequently make use of the enhanced services afforded by the present invention.
Although by no means limited thereto, the present invention draws on techniques well established in the art of data hiding, steganography, and audio watermarking to embed secondary information in audio passages. Whereas the aforementioned technical arts aspire to place data within a host or carrier in a manner substantially perceptually invisible to the user of the processed information, the present invention desires only that the secondary information be unobtrusively presented to the user. Ideally, it is preferred that the steganographic asymptote of substantially invisible encoding be achieved, for communicating secondary information to the user. But this is not a requirement of the present invention.